On March 11, 2007, downtown Bogotá was filled with soldiers, snipers, undercover cops, and riot police on account of George Bush’s visit to Colombia. Nevertheless, hundreds gathered at the police barricades to burn flags and express their opposition to neoliberal capitalism. When the police turned water cannons, tear gas, and batons upon the crowd, the protesters tore lampposts and park benches out of the sidewalk to defend themselves and smashed the windows of banks and shops.
Thanks to the internet, many anarchists in the United States have seen photos of clashes like this one, but few understand the context in which they take place. We paid a visit to Bogotá recently to get more background on the political and social... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) What’s bad about political/intellectual elitism? It alienates everyone else from politics and critical thinking, rendering them powerless more effectively than any oppressive government could ever do. The propaganda of network TV is not more responsible for the apathy of the mainstream Westerner than the average radical leftist is. Those for whom being “political” and “educated” has become an identity, who use these terms to define themselves as a certain type of person, thus make others think that politics and radical thinking are the hallmark of a certain group of people (a drab and haughty group, at that), no more, and marginalize themselves from the rest of the world which so badly needs some of their ideas... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) WANTED: Creative, independent men and women, tired of being exhausted by the trivial details of modern survival, fed up with being bored by modern entertainment, no longer confused by the distractions of the mass media… not content with limiting their freedom, their lives, to their “free time.” People who prefer idealism to realism, and reality to ideology. To become full-time revolutionaries. NOT armchair revolutionaries, not lunch break revolutionaries, not leisure-time revolutionaries. And not “professional” revolutionaries: rather than making a business out of “revolution.,” they must make revolution their business. Men and women who will not allow their efforts to win back their freedom to bec... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The beast has been awakened—snarling—and wants to bite someone soon. We fear, not without reason, that it may be us. At this moment the Underground Armies of Barbarian Anarchists are getting scant attention. Still, we are on a very short list. We have recently been considered a genuine threat to national security. We have yet to be linked in any manner to the hijackers and their supporters, despite the obvious advantages that the reactionaries stand to gain by doing so. This will not last forever. We are being given a grace period, to rally around the flag and return to the fold, or else. They will connect the dots or create the dots to connect, and just because many of us are Americans does not mean we are safe.
Thus specu... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A group of people who have been directly harmed by informant provocateurs have put together this checklist, drawing on personal experiences as well as those of other activists and information from informant provocateurs who have gone public. We hope you can learn from the damage that has already been done, so these people can be stopped before they are able to harm you.
Here are ten warning signs:
1.
Something feels “off.” Something about them just doesn’t line up. Their stories about their activist history or life history, don’t ring true. At this point, you need to run a background and criminal check. If you wait for all the other signs, it may be too late. The most obvious cause for serious concern is when so... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In February and March, during the run-up to the elections, Italy experienced a period of intense conflict between fascists and anti-fascists analogous to the period in the United States that culminated with the struggle in Charlottesville in August 2017. In hopes of learning from how these conflicts are playing out in different parts of the world, we reached out to our comrades in Italy to learn about the history of fascism on the Italian peninsula, the current state of the autonomous movements resisting it, and the possibilities and obstacles ahead.
Across the world, reactionary movements have emerged promoting nationalist and racialist values. The global rebellions of 2011–2014 produced formidable enemies, as many hastened to defe... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) On Wednesday, February 1, noted misogynist and Islamophobe Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at the University of California at Berkeley. Fierce protests forced the university to cancel the event, prompting much handwringing about free speech. For more on the relationship between speech and action, consult our earlier text, This Is Not a Dialogue.
“There’s a big difference between words and action.”
— Milo Yiannopoulos
Milo, things might have gone differently in Berkeley on Wednesday night.
If a Trump fan had not just murdered six people in a mosque in Quebec City,
If one of your supporters had not just shot a protester at your talk in Seattle,
If your fans had not deceitfully portrayed those at... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) On December 6, 2008, in Athens, Greece, police murdered 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in the neighborhood of Exarchia. In response, anarchists, young people, and other rebels from targeted populations rose in revolt, organizing countrywide riots and occupations that lasted for weeks. Arguably, this was the first of the waves of rebellion that culminated with the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. This year, as they have for a decade, people observed the murder of Alexandros and the insurrection of 2008 with a day of demonstrations and direct action. This is a report from December 6, 2018 in Athens, including some of the solidarity actions that preceded it.
An Outside Perspective
I remember the 6th of December 2008. I remember som... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) That was the morning we overslept—Friday, the twentieth of January, 2017. It was every activist’s greatest fear: our cell phone alarms blaring in unison, our friends running around us scrambling to get ready, while we just lay there, arms thrown haphazardly across our faces, dead to the world.
How could we sleep with Marius Mason in prison, the polar ice caps gushing into the ocean, and Donald Trump entering office?
For months, reality had hung on us like a bad dream; riding into DC was like entering its epicenter. Every Nazi troll on the internet was promising to gun us down in cold blood. Newspapers were reporting that two million bikers had promised to form a wall of meat between us and the motorcade of the President-elect.... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Falling in love is the fundamental revolutionary act, the prerequisite for resistance to today’s tedious, socially restrictive, culturally constrictive world.
Love transforms the world. Where the lover formerly felt boredom, he now feels passion. Where she once was complacent, she now is excited and compelled to self-asserting action. The world which once seemed empty and tiresome becomes filled with meaning, filled with risks and rewards, with majesty and danger. Life for the lover is a gift, an adventure with the highest possible stakes; every moment is memorable, heartbreaking in its fleeting beauty. When he falls in love, a man who once felt disoriented, alienated, and confused will know exactly what he wants. Suddenly his existe... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Part I. Timeline of Events
In June 2013, immediately on the heels of the uprising in Turkey, Brazil erupted in nationwide turmoil. Beginning with protests against a public transit fare increase, this upheaval brought hundreds of thousands to the streets in open fighting with the police. The fare increase was soundly defeated, in one of the few victories of the past several years of global revolts. But the movement was a victim of its own success, as middle-class nationalists and pacifists joined in, clashing with other protesters and muddying the issues.
Although anarchists played a decisive role in these events, very little material about the upheaval has appeared in English from Brazilian anarchists. To correct this, we have solicited... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) For 13 years, anarchists and environmentalists have observed June 11 as a day of action to mobilize around our imprisoned comrades. Over that time, the pace of revolt has quickened, with so many uprisings, clashes, and anarchist attacks that it is difficult to count all of them—not to mention all the indictments, raids, mass arrests, grand juries, and deaths. In this constantly shifting terrain, it’s easy to lose track of the origins of our traditions. Our goal here is to trace a short history of June 11 as a small contribution to the global rhythm of revolt. At the end, we’ve included a timeline illustrating how many people around the world have contributed to the momentum around June 11. We hope to rescue these actions f... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Today, after nearly a year of suspense, the first six J20 defendants to go to trial were declared innocent of all charges. They are only six of over 200 people mass-arrested at Donald Trump’s Inauguration, nearly 200 of whom still face the same identical charges of six felonies and two misdemeanors—charges that could put them in prison for sixty or more years each. The fight is far from over. Indeed, in response to the verdict, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia announced that “they look forward to the same rigorous review for each defendant.” We must redouble our support for all the other defendants and show that it is the state itself that is guilty.
The fact that the defendants have stuck... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Last week, millions watched the dramatic hearings pitting Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh against Christine Blasey Ford, who courageously narrated her experience of being sexually assaulted by him decades ago. Once again, Americans were confronted with the brazen entitlement of the male power establishment. The hearings stirred up traumatic memories for countless survivors, ratcheted up partisan tensions, and catalyzed furious responses from feminists and progressives in view of the implications of the court shifting further to the right. With Roe v. Wade hanging in the balance, critics point out the horrifying irony of an unrepentant sexual predator potentially casting the deciding vote to block abortion access to millions of women a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In March 1921, an uprising on the island fortress of Kronstadt shook Russia, starkly illustrating the conflicts within the Russian revolution. To observe the 100-year anniversary of the revolt, we present an overview of the questions that were at stake in the struggle, following by a full chronology of the events, illustrated by selections from contemporary historical documents—including the entire text of all 14 issues of the newspaper published by the Kronstadt rebels, the Izvestia [news] of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Sailors, Soldiers, and Workers of the Town of Kronstadt.1 Though many different factions have attempted to portray the Kronstadt uprising according to many different ideological frameworks, this is a ra... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A year after fascists with torches marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, anarchists and other anti-racists who traveled there to shut down their rally returned to support locals in observing the anniversary of those events. Defying a massive police mobilization aimed at suppressing all freedom to demonstrate, hundreds marched around downtown for hours. The following hasty report was submitted by some of the out-of-town participants.
When we arrived in Charlottesville, the atmosphere felt different than it had a year ago when we came here to oppose the Unite the Right demonstration. Then, the city felt tense, but it was also full of people who were heading into a fight they believed in. The mood wasn’t festive, ex... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) On January 17, 2018, the French government announced on television, via the voice of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, that it had given up on pursuing the highly controversial project of building a new airport at Noter-Dame-des-Landes (NDDL). This decision capped five decades of political, economic, legal, environmental, and personal struggle. The airport was to be located approximately 30 kilometers north of the city of Nantes in western France; instead, the site became la ZAD—the Zone à Défendre (Zone To Defend). What began as a small protest camp grew into a world-famous space of autonomous experimentation that lasted almost nine years.
At the very moment we are publishing this article, a massive police operation has... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Since October 17, Lebanon has experienced countrywide demonstrations that have toppled the prime minister and transformed Lebanese society. These demonstrations are part of a global wave of uprisings including Ecuador, Chili, Honduras, Haiti, Sudan, Iraq, Hong Kong, and Catalunya, in which the exploited and oppressed are challenging the legitimacy of their rulers. In Lebanon, a sectarian power-sharing arrangement dating from the end of the civil war has created a permanent ruling class of warlords who use patronage networks to maintain power by winning elections—confirming our thesis that politics is war by other means. In this thorough account of the events of the past month, an on-the-ground participant describes the Lebanese uprisi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A year after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that left one dead and countless injured, we can see how fascists, police, centrists, and others have learned from experience and adjusted their strategies. Have those of us who oppose the rise of fascism done the same? Read on for our analysis.
Fascists and the Far Right
Some fascist organizations disintegrated after the debacle in Charlottesville, and many still haven’t recovered. Patriot Prayer was in disarray; Richard Spencer scaled back his efforts to speak on university campuses; the Traditionalist Workers’ Party collapsed. A few months after “Unite the Right,” some anti-fascists felt confident enough to declare a provisional victory. However, a year... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) After hours of being herded into airports, terrorized by border guards, and adjusting my disguise as a harmless pony-tailed animation artist, I arrived at Annemasse. I felt like somewhere there should be trumpets, a glorious symphony announcing that against all odds this convicted criminal had made in past border-guards and hitch-hiked without knowing a word of French to a tiny little village in the Alps which served as our secret anarchist headquarters. As travel companions I was with an Italian philosopher and an Estonian film student (who we had picked up at the airport because “We looked interesting”) and in my pockets only a few pennies. Yet, within only one day we were going to take on the eight largest powers on the face ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) We received the following report from the group that produced the French version of To Change Everything, Pour Tout Changer. They describe the situation in Paris before and after the attacks of November 13: the intensification of xenophobic discourse, the repression of homeless refugees, the declaration of a “state of emergency” as a way to clamp down on dissent, the preparations for the COP 21 summit at which demonstrations are now banned, and what people are doing to counter all this. It offers an eyewitness account from the front lines of the struggle against the opportunists who hope to use the tragedy of November 13 to advance their agenda of racism and autocracy. With demonstrations forbidden and the COP 21 summit around t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) You strike the note—it sounds in us.
It is an honor to address you on account of your courage in the struggle still unfolding in Egypt.
For a decade and a half, we have participated in black bloc actions in the US and elsewhere around the world. Of course, we do not represent anyone or anything; the black bloc is a tactic, not a group—that is what makes it so frightening to our rulers. But on the basis of our experience with this tactic, we would like to share some of our perspectives in hopes of establishing a more explicit intercontinental dialogue.
We have already been in a kind of dialogue with you, exchanging signals of revolt across the ocean. We’ve circulated reports of your struggle here, and now we are seeing p... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) For almost two years now, faithful Democrats have waited for special counsel Robert Mueller to file his report about collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian attempts to interfere in the US election, not to mention Trump’s involvement in obstruction of justice. Whenever Trump’s activity provokes them or a subterranean rumbling within the Justice Department emboldens them, the faithful take to the streets and social media with hand-held cardboard signs and internet memes to proclaim that Mueller Time is close at hand. Yet even if the Mueller investigation concludes with Trump’s impeachment, the spectacle of the investigation has served to immobilize millions who have a stake in systemic socia... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Throughout February 2017, hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets of Romania, protesting corruption under nationalist flags and banners. In the following report, our Romanian comrades analyze the discourse that drove the movement, scrutinize the class perspectives of the participants, and explore how they function as an obstacle to liberation.
It seems that the window of opportunity that opened up seven years ago when uprisings and occupation movements began to break out all around the Mediterranean has closed. To the south and east, these uprisings ended with even more neoliberal or fascist governments taking power; in some cases, they led directly to war. Today, the upheavals that once offered anarchists a chance to create ne... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In Washington, DC, at the heart of the white settler-colonial state, local communities have long defended themselves against many different forms of oppression. In the following historical overview, we trace the roots of anti-fascist organizing in DC through the first two decades of the 21st century. Like our earlier text, “How Anti-Fascists Won the Battles of Berkeley,” this text offers some important background as anti-fascists in Washington, DC prepare to confront the second “Unite the Right” rally this coming August.
Fascism is a pressing threat here in the capital of the so-called United States on occupied Piscataway land. Days before the first Unite The Right, the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesvi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Preface
Five years ago today, police officer Darren Wilson murdered Michael Brown, a black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri. Police officers kill young black men every day in the United States, but that day, people rose up to police and white supremacy. It’s important to revisit the Ferguson uprising today, to try to distinguish between the events as they occurred and the ways they were mythologized afterwards, and to inquire about what they still have to teach us.
To observe this anniversary, we are publishing the complete diary of an anarchist from St. Louis who participated in most of the major events of the uprising. This is a valuable historical document illustrating the contradictions and tensions within the movement from the... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Like many contemporary anarchists, many anarchists of the 19th and 20th centuries maintained relationships with multiple romantic partners, or were involved with partners who did. Just as it does today, this often precipitated gossip, heartache, jealousy, and interminable emotional processing. A complete history of anarchist polyamory drama would be nearly as ambitious as a comprehensive history of the anarchist movement itself. Here, we’ve limited ourselves to a few poignant anecdotes from the lives of a handful of classical anarchists. There is a great deal more to be told—for example, the love triangle involving Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Johann Most, or Voltairine de Cleyre’s writing about ownership and posse... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Fourteen years ago, at the onset of the occupation of Iraq, one CrimethInc. cell set out to break the illusion of jingoistic pro-war unity in their small conservative city. To accomplish this, they built an effigy of George W. Bush and staged “boxing matches” throughout downtown on Halloween night so everyone could see how much rage and disrespect was felt towards the so-called Commander in Chief. Theatrics like this can delegitimize and demystify the reigning authorities, making it increasingly difficult for them to count on the obedience of the general population. Now, a week ahead of Halloween, we offer this how-to guide from our anarchist cookbook Recipes for Disaster so you can make effigies of your own to deploy against to... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) On August 19, ten days after police murdered Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a slew of corporate media stories appeared charging that “criminals” and “outside agitators” were responsible for clashes during the protests. CNN alleged that “all sides agree there are a select number of people—distinct from the majority of protesters—who are fomenting violence,” quoting a State Highway Patrol Captain, a State Senator, and a former FBI assistant director to confirm this.
Today’s militarized police understand that they are operating on two different battlefields at once: not only the battlefield of the streets, but also the battlefield of discourse. So long as most people remain passive, ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) January 20, 2017 saw the fiercest resistance to a presidential inauguration in US history. The day also saw well over 100 demonstrators surrounded by police at the intersection of 12th and L and arrested. This was the largest mass arrest in DC since the People’s Strike 15 years earlier, before some of this year’s inauguration demonstrators were even born. The gap between this group and previous generations who had experienced mass arrests was apparent. Some unintentionally enabled the police to collect intelligence about them; many lacked basic knowledge of what an arrest process entails. As we enter a new phase of mass resistance and mass arrests, we want to pass on some lessons from the kettle at 12th & L.
1. If You&rsqu... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)